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Me: “Very Chomsky”
Occasional Reader: “Yes, but he is not wrong with his data and facts”.
Me: the rest below…. (with right of reply to Occasional Reader)
“Data and facts”? Perhaps, but shouldn’t Sachs then avoid emotive words? Like: naive, dangerous, outmoded, ineptitude, arrogance, disastrous, debacles, horrible. These are not the words of a man driven by “data and facts”.
My other gripes with Sachs:
Mind reading: eg “The US had a lot of resentment” about China’s rise. Really? Did Sachs hear people say: “I resent China’s rise”?
Misrepresentation: Sachs says China warned the US “we must lower the tensions" before the Pelosi visit to Taiwan. This urge to “lower tensions” appears nowhere in what Beijing said, which included "[The US] repeated the wrong deeds of last year”, "[it] grossly trampled on the principle of international law” the visit was "an evil scheme’.
Lying by omission
There’s “data and facts” mentioned and then there’s “data and facts” not mentioned. Lies by omission .
Omitted by Sachs, a selection:
Me: the rest below…. (with right of reply to Occasional Reader)
“Data and facts”? Perhaps, but shouldn’t Sachs then avoid emotive words? Like: naive, dangerous, outmoded, ineptitude, arrogance, disastrous, debacles, horrible. These are not the words of a man driven by “data and facts”.
My other gripes with Sachs:
Mind reading: eg “The US had a lot of resentment” about China’s rise. Really? Did Sachs hear people say: “I resent China’s rise”?
Misrepresentation: Sachs says China warned the US “we must lower the tensions" before the Pelosi visit to Taiwan. This urge to “lower tensions” appears nowhere in what Beijing said, which included "[The US] repeated the wrong deeds of last year”, "[it] grossly trampled on the principle of international law” the visit was "an evil scheme’.
Lying by omission
There’s “data and facts” mentioned and then there’s “data and facts” not mentioned. Lies by omission .
Omitted by Sachs, a selection:
· WW2 and the defeat of fascism
· The Marshall Plan
· The United Nations
· The World Bank
· The International Monetary Fund
· The World Trade Organisation
And also:
· The US guaranteed (and continues to) safe maritime passage around the world: esp South China Sea and though the Straits of Malacca.
· In Kosovo it protected Muslims from genocide by Christians
· It established NATO which has kept Europe safe from a resurgence of the Soviet Union.
· International Aid: US is the largest aid donor in the world and has been since WW2.
Are these to be discounted to nothing? Sachs doesn’t mention one. And yet they are world-changing. The US founded all. China is involved in all, at US insistence and invitation.
The West did not demonise China as claimed by Sachs.
The “influencers”, journalists, academics, all encouraged China to be part of this global system. It was China alone that joined, ignored the rules, and now wants them changed.
Neither Russia nor China are in the mood to live in a world of Kumbaya peace.
Russia, under Putin, would not have held off attacking Ukraine had the west not been pushing NATO east. He made that clear repeatedly.
China may invade Taiwan, whether or not the US has Congressional visits. That will be down to Beijing. Noone else.The only thing holding off a unilateral invation, (purely for Xi Jinping’s “face”, let’s be clear) will be the US hegemon, making it clear it’s not on.
So we’re left with hegemons. One in the West one in the East. China and the US.
I’ve lived in both. And now live on the edge, the fault line, of China’s hegemony and the hegemony of the US.
I’m clear. If I have to choose, I choose the US hegemon. I’m clear on its faults. I’m also clear on its wonderful positives.
It is true that there is one better and one worse. For me that choice is clear. And it is not a “false narrative”.
I remember something I was told along the way: the US has one word it lives by “Freedom”. China has no single word you can sum it up by. What? “Confucian”? “Authoritarian”? “Manufacturer”?
The West is flawed. Yet is stands for greater freedom, in all the hussle and bustle and mess, than China does today. A final observation: Jeffrey Sachs is free to make his video in the west. Critical of the west. He would not be able to do so on the other side of this divide. If he lived in China and made the same criticisms of China as he’s done about the US, from the US, he’d be in jail, smartly. I’d rather live in that country, for all that it’s messy. Than the cleaner, safer one, where you end up in jail for having views different from your emperor.
The West did not demonise China as claimed by Sachs.
The “influencers”, journalists, academics, all encouraged China to be part of this global system. It was China alone that joined, ignored the rules, and now wants them changed.
Neither Russia nor China are in the mood to live in a world of Kumbaya peace.
Russia, under Putin, would not have held off attacking Ukraine had the west not been pushing NATO east. He made that clear repeatedly.
China may invade Taiwan, whether or not the US has Congressional visits. That will be down to Beijing. Noone else.The only thing holding off a unilateral invation, (purely for Xi Jinping’s “face”, let’s be clear) will be the US hegemon, making it clear it’s not on.
So we’re left with hegemons. One in the West one in the East. China and the US.
I’ve lived in both. And now live on the edge, the fault line, of China’s hegemony and the hegemony of the US.
I’m clear. If I have to choose, I choose the US hegemon. I’m clear on its faults. I’m also clear on its wonderful positives.
It is true that there is one better and one worse. For me that choice is clear. And it is not a “false narrative”.
I remember something I was told along the way: the US has one word it lives by “Freedom”. China has no single word you can sum it up by. What? “Confucian”? “Authoritarian”? “Manufacturer”?
The West is flawed. Yet is stands for greater freedom, in all the hussle and bustle and mess, than China does today. A final observation: Jeffrey Sachs is free to make his video in the west. Critical of the west. He would not be able to do so on the other side of this divide. If he lived in China and made the same criticisms of China as he’s done about the US, from the US, he’d be in jail, smartly. I’d rather live in that country, for all that it’s messy. Than the cleaner, safer one, where you end up in jail for having views different from your emperor.
